


The Broken, the Beaten, and the Damned

by Chronicler



Category: My Chemical Romance, the black parade - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Black Parade, Cyberpunk, Flash Fic, Gothic, M/M, Steampunk, The Black Parade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-17
Updated: 2016-05-17
Packaged: 2018-06-09 00:17:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6881533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chronicler/pseuds/Chronicler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just another day at the end of the world amongst the fallen. The Band Leader tries not to notice the Band Member. Until he does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Broken, the Beaten, and the Damned

**Author's Note:**

> Watch me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRKJiM9Njr8
> 
> Re-edited & re-posted because I delete a lot and this story didn't even last one night.

 

 _‘We’ll carry on!'_ the Band Leader screamed as the music pounded around him on the wreathed float coasting along the wide, bumpy road. The air, as always, was a dull swilled grey, thick as soup with motes drifting through it.

But the words were hollow to him. Empty. Carry on? It’s not like The Black Parade had any choice. They had always been here and they always would be.

Eerie silence accompanied them from the expressionless, marching procession following. Occasionally, blank eyes caught on his from passersby lining the route. Watchers dressed in frock coats, or hooped gowns and corsets, whalebone skeletons showing. Some wore gas masks still, as though it weren’t far, far too late. Dressed for a masquerade ball that would never begin or end.

No one sang along with his dirge. He wouldn’t have know how to react if they had.

A deeper dusk was falling by the time they got back to the amphitheatre to finish the day’s performance then packed away their instruments under stars emerging to slice through the gloom. Though, it was hard to tell one hour from another, one day from another, each the same and the ruined city monochrome and static.

‘We should get inside. Do you want to come with me, Gerard? My place is closer…’ a member of the band asked as he closed his guitar into its case. Slight and bursting with wiry energy, he stood out against the stillness. Over his pallid flesh he wore an identical black uniform to the Band Leader's own, its white stripes like ribs and polished silver buttons providing the only light. Had he been here a day or a century? The faces of the band members changed sometimes, just different performers playing the same roles. The Band Leader didn’t pay attention. One corpse was much like another once it went cold. The suspicion sometimes pricked his skin that another of the musicians, who had already wandered away, had been his brother once. But that had been another life and didn't matter anymore.

‘Where did you hear that? You shouldn’t call me it,’ he replied, trying to ignore the watchful green of the Band Member’s eyes and the intricate designs dancing over his skewered skin.

‘Gerard, you mean?' He shrugged his scrawny shoulders. 'It was your name once. And no one’s listening. Besides, even if they turned us in, what do we have left to lose?’

‘You shouldn’t,’ The Band Leader repeated, turning. How could anyone be so careless of the endless tortures that lay in wait for the disobedient?

But a compact hand, surprisingly strong, caught his arm. ‘All you do is hide, but you can’t hide from me.’

He wrenched himself away, but he let himself be led out into the streets. Let himself be guided through the debris of the grey expanse crumbling around them. The shattered city drowning in its own dust. He took his unexpected companion's case to carry.

The skeletons of ravens flew past, their caws breaking through the air. The only colour was the red from shattered bodies dotted along the gutters, filling the air with the stench of a charnel house.

When echoing bells started to toll, they hurried, discreetly, the Band Member’s hand catching at the Band Leader’s arm.

The haunted streets started to empty. _‘Curfew,'_ figures whispered as they passed, their voices hushed, their eyes hooded before they skittered away.

The streets would be cleared soon, replaced with the clattering of carts and whirr of machines. No life left behind. What passed for life among the dead, anyway.

They stopped at a tall, ancient, boarded-up building, with chipped stone scrolls and gargoyles leering over the necropolis.

The Band Member’s room was an impersonal box like all the others, austere and crypt-like. Candles dripped wax over the stink of rotting flowers.

‘My name’s Frank,’ he murmured as he stripped off the Band Leader’s clothes.

‘You’re just a band member. One of many.’ Because the ceremony mattered, the rigid order, until they all drowned in it.

The Band Member smirked as he pulled off his own stiff uniform, pushed the Band Leader backwards onto the hard, pillored bed and climbed on top of him.

As he worked himself open and then guided the Band Leader inside of him, the world cracked open and colours bled through.

And, gripping onto Frank's slender waist, Gerard realised too late that the memory of life inside himself was kindling that one spark had reignited onto an inconvenient flame. And that he, the Band Leader, the awakened saviour of the broken, the beaten, and the damned, was going to burn what was left of this world to ashes.

****_The end_ ** **


End file.
